Raji Deyat Mangalam urges community treatment and Treatment Court Expansion Act

Good afternoon, Chair and Committee Member, and thank you so much for this opportunity.

My name is Raji Deyat Mangalam, and I'm a licensed clinical social worker and senior policy social worker at New York County Defender Services.

I'm here to testify that community recovery and reintegration are not a pie in the sky.

I want to share about two clients who might have been written off as lost causes, but for many of us banding together and refusing to give up on community-based solutions.

When I first met my client, I'll call Harry, to protect his confidentiality.

He'd been street homeless for decades.

He was severely depressed, had serious opioid use issues.

He was estranged from his family and facing a long prison sentence on numerous violent felony charges.

By every measure the systems use, there was no hope for Harry.

After great many struggles on Harry's part and a great deal of advocacy to get in the right community services, he turned the corner.

He began to excel in every aspect of his ATI mandate, and he graduated from Manhattan's Felony ATI Court with flying colors.

A few years have passed, and Harry continues to thrive.

He's well, he's a working taxpayer, he's reconnected with his family, and he remains stably integrated in the community.

One employer even wrote to the ATI court, I truly mean it that I'd hire 15 Harrys if I could.

Another NYCDS client, whom I'll call Tom, was extremely

extremely ill when his attorney met him at arraignment.

And he was charged with a violent felony, homeless, completely disorganized in thought and speech, and had been in the throes of untreated schizophrenia for decades.

He also struggled in various ways.

He also had substance use issues.

And what I'm going to say is that the DA objected to treatment court, but the judge saw something in Tom and gave him his real first chance at community integration.

In respect for the time, I'm going to cut short and say that at his ATI graduation, the DA said, quote, you have proven us wrong, quote, and called watching his journey inspiring.

Neither Harry nor Tom recovered at Rikers Island.

They recovered because many of us fought to get them into services in the community, and because in Tom's case, a judge was willing to overrule a prosecutor.

Let's just take a step back for a moment.

We've tried caging human beings in estate-run asylums.

We then shifted to a whack-a-mole approach since 1963, and now that's what got us to where we are today with yesterday's asylum and today's Rikers.

In the morning, we were talking about outposted therapeutic housing units in our latest iteration of what I fear is whack-a-mole.

I'm going to ask you to wrap up, please.

Yes, yes.

And I would say that the time to invest in community infrastructure is now, and that I would say that treatment courts provide critical case management and oversight, holding both participants and community programs accountable.

We at, in finishing, we at New York County Defender Services are asking the council to support and put the Treatment Court Expansion Act on your Albany agenda without any further delay so that we can divert as many people as possible away from jails.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You can submit the rest in writing.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Next panel, Ethan Lowe with Legal Aid, Camilla Ruda, Legal Aid Society,

Rachel Golden, Maya Zellkind, Lucas Marquez.

Ask everybody to please adhere to the two-minute limit.

And you can begin once you're ready.

Just come off of mute.